Many Americans are dissatisfied with democracy. Their anger with their government over gun violence, corruption, budget deficits, immigration and racial tensions grows. They feel their economic opportunities slipping behind peer nations, and they see a political system that appears to ignore them. They lose faith that working hard and playing fair will allow them to prosper. They grow cynical about the political process and search for answers in demagogues with simple solutions and familiar scapegoats.
The rot is deepening, and a movement to save democracy may be in danger of missing the boat. A few key steps are needed, but a grand vision for transforming American democracy is essential if it is to restore the public’s trust and faith in their leaders and their institutions.
Tocqueville noticed that as the conditions of men equalized, their grip on sentimental tradition and absolute morality loosened, allowing them to conceive of government as an instrument to secure their welfare rather than as a power that bestowed their good fortune on them by divine decree. As the sanctity of equality with liberty gave rise to self-consciously democratic art and literature, he warned that it could also give birth to an insidious apathy that would erode civic life and make people unable to resist the tyranny of the majority.
He saw that periodic elections interrupt certainties, arouse herd instincts among citizens and introduce a sense of contingency in their relations with one another. He worried that the shared sense of uncertainty that they foster might make popular opinion a sort of religion, and the majority its ministering prophet. But he did not think that periodic elections were the root cause of this cynicism, distrust and learned helplessness. Rather, they were the result of an underlying dynamic, a tendency toward despotism in the face of a growing economy that is unable to respond to public demands and a political system that is increasingly unable to hold up to scrutiny.
In the 2024 election, some Democrats are pitching a platform that promises to save democracy from the threat posed by Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but it is unlikely to inspire broad support. The Democratic party needs to be specific about the kind of democracy that it wants, and then work tirelessly for that agenda, not just to revive public faith in the concept of democracy but to bolster it on an ongoing basis. That will involve expanding the ability to vote (through automatic registration, expanded early voting and universal voting) while restoring checks on executive aggrandizement through the creation of independent and watchdog institutions and a return to the strict protections of the Voting Rights Act. It will also mean eliminating the racially biased practices that distort our electoral system and prevent some Americans from exercising their most basic right to participate in our democracy. If that happens, we might have a chance to revive the sense of civic urgency that accompanied the fight for equal opportunity.